How to Stop All Background Apps After Chrome Browser is Closed

Chrome browser is unique in its design because it allows not only extensions to be installed, but also something called apps. These apps are different from the extensions basically because they use extensive use of user interface to provide new features inside the Chrome browsers, while the extensions have little or no user interface. For example, Photo editors, video editors, screenshot takers etc., could be available in Chrome web store as apps. But since the Chrome apps use rich media and rely on heavy use of the user interface components, they consume a lot more memory (RAM) and the processing power (both CPU and GPU) of your PC compared to the extensions.

Some of these apps can keep running in the background even if you close all the open Chrome browser windows. This means that even though you may not need these apps, they are still hogging your system resources and perhaps affecting your computer’s performance (specially if you have an older system with relatively smaller RAM).

In order to keep your PC running like a young rabbit being chased by a fox, you can make changes in Chrome configurations so that all the apps running in the background get automatically closed as soon as you close the Chrome browser windows. Here is how:

Click on the hamburger icon (three horizontal lines) to open up the Chrome menu and then select Settings from there.

On the settings page scroll down to the very bottom and click on Show advanced settings so that you can see even more configurable settings.

Scroll down the setting page and find the settings categorized under System.

Now as soon as you close all the Chrome browser windows, the background apps (if any was running) will be automatically closed down too.

If you are experiencing system slowdowns and RAM shortages, then perhaps the background apps installed inside the Chrome browser might be causing this. You can make the background apps stop as soon as the Chrome window is closed.